Thursday – It was 13:15 and the CS team arrived at the train station of Almere, where I met with them to check in to the hotel, for the EuroCup LAN finals. They were staying in ANNO, which is also a pub and restaurant. The hotel was much better then the hotel that they were staying in during their boot camp. Same counts for the UT2004 team, with who we met 15 minutes later at the hotel.
We had planned quite a lot of things for that day, the main plan being, visiting Amsterdam.

Amsterdam
A little bit later then planned, we arrived at the Central station of Amsterdam. On the way to Amsterdam, Vo0 joined the group and we started our stay in Amsterdam in an Italian restaurant. The food was nice and everyone had enough for a while, so we started to walk around and obviously the part to begin is the Red Light district. A lot of people think that its disgusting to look there, and that it for guys who can’t get a girl. Maybe that’s true:), but still, it’s a must to visit the place when you are actually in Amsterdam.
Its legal here in Holland, and they make money with it.

Of course we had a lot of fun when we walked through it, since a lot of people never actually saw it, for example MegatoN, the aAa guys and a few more.

We stopped at a bar somewhere near the red light district and got a beer, and stayed there for about 45 minutes. We went more through a different part of the red light district, the most known alleyway of Amsterdam, also known as “the smallest alleyway of Amsterdam”.

Around 18:00 CET, we took a train to Almere again. Indeed, no coffeeshop visits and no smoking, because of the tournament.

Almere, the Fnatic dinner
Around 19:00 CET, we arrived at my house, where my mum prepared the food (with the help of Margo, Vo0’s mum), since we had planned a Fnatic dinner. In the first place, it would have been a Fnatic only dinner, but it ended up a little bit differently. Eyeballers (d3sp & ironbyte), iCE cLIMBERS (fox & toxic), RedEye (iTG), Carmac (GGL) and also Jsome (host of Fnatic Open Day and writer of Gamelux) ended up in our living room. It was a lot of fun and according to most of the people, the food was good. We made some pictures, so you will see that in our EuroCup gallery, which we will upload very soon.

Between 22:00 and 23:30, I started to bring people back to their hotel or the train station, since some people had to go all the way to Rotterdam again, and both our teams wanted to sleep on time.

Friday – The day started very bad, since it was raining very hard, and wind wasn’t that slow either. I was the first Fnatic person to be at the location, so I was waiting for the UT team and also the CS team to come pretty soon, and they did.
The UT2004 team were suppose to play at 10:00 CET, and it was first versus mousesports but the UT admin turned it around again, as how it was in the first place, versus aAa.playit. But the game got a little delay. Instead of 10:00 CET, the game got played at 19:00 CET. You can see that as a nine hours delay, but gladly, it wasn’t. Because of a lot of PC problems, they decided to not rotate the games anymore. Their original plan was to have different matches in different games after each other, so it would be the most attractive to the people at home and at the venue. But unfortunately, it wasn’t possible.

During the 9 hours time, there was a lot going on in Counter-Strike. Almost the whole tournament got finished. Before the LAN finals, it was always fnatic vs. hostile, but shortly before it, they made it fnatic vs. mousesports. As in the UT2004 competition, this was wrong, so the first game for fnatic.cs was versus the French team hostile.
The match ended up in a good win (16:06) for Fnatic.cs, even though we lost both the pistol rounds, so we had to face the winner of the top-match Virtus.po versus mousesports. It ended up in a win for mousesports, but in overtime. So our game in the winners bracket final was versus the German mousesports. The Germans managed to beat us with 16:10 on de_cbble, so we got knocked down in to the losers bracket, where we had to face the Russians, Virtus.pro.

Now it started to get interesting, since the next CS game started at the exact same time as the first round of the Unreal Tournament 2004 competition. At the same time, we had Fnatic.cs vs. Virtus.pro and Fnatic.ut vs. aAa.playit. Both games ended in the favour of our opponents.

For the CS team, it was the end of the tournament, for the UT2004 team, it was time to focus on the next match against Ocrana. The game got actually played on Sunday, at 00:30 CET in the morning.

After walking around and being a bit tired of the location (staying there from 10:00 to 00:00), I decided to leave it a day.

Saturday – Gladly, this day started a little bit better. I knew that it wouldn’t be such a long day on the location, since it would end before 18:00 CET and I knew that the UT2004 team won vs. Ocrana in the night, which ended up in a rematch for us against aAa.playit. Our UT2004 team was this time better then the Italians, it ended up in a 2:0 win for us.

The Grand final in UT2004 was taking place and I had my seat in the spectate area, so I could see it better and hear the shoutcast of Redeye and Tosspot. In the first map, we lost very close, which was actually mouz’s map. We could have won it, but we were a bit unlucky.
The second map was a real thriller. It could have gone either way but it ended up in our favour. I can write a book about it, but I’d suggest that you download the match from our file section and see it yourself. It was sick and it was amazing. In 1 minute time, we got back from 10 frags.

The third map was also again very close, but mousesports took that one and won the EuroCup IX. Congratulations with the win.

After the tournament….
Mr. Light (Quasar), was staying at my place for the night, since his airplane was leaving early on Sunday, and of course, he was disappointed with the second place. So after the tournament, we went to my house and we got some food (frikandel’s :D). We spoke about going out and getting a drink in Almere, but a visit to Amsterdam, was completely out of the question. But shortly before we left from the EuroCup location, Brett Hawkins, the President of the GGL, asked me to come with our teams to drink something downtown. So, after the dinner, we went back to downtown Almere, and we met up with the ClanBase crew, who worked their ass off and really needed a beer :). The original idea of me and Quasar was to stay there only for a few hours, maximum till midnight, but not any later then that.
Then, the group left for Amsterdam. They wanted to go and eat something in the centre of Amsterdam, and after that, going out in to a pub or something. So me and Pete decided, a tournament doesn’t take place every day and its always fun to go out, especially for me, since its in my own country.

So we took the car to Amsterdam, to the admin hotel in Amsterdam, so we could leave any time we wanted. We arrived at the meeting point around midnight, and most of the people didn’t eat yet, so they went in to a restaurant and a few of us, Pete, Tosspot, HellSpaWN and myself, went in to a club. 40 minutes later, we met up with the other guys again. Some people from the ClanBase crew wanted to see the red light district, so it ended up with me showing the whole group through the red light district, because I did the tour on Thursday as well (I am not a regular client!:D). Only this time, it was looking better, because it was night and more windows were open.

Around 4:00, we took a cab back to the admin hotel, where we stayed for about 45 minutes with quite a big group. Some people had some drinks, such as beer and dropshot. But I was very tired and so was Pete, he had to go on a airplane 4 hours later.

Sunday – This day really started bad. I went to bed around 6:00, since I went to the hotel of the CS team as well in the night, their airplane was leaving at 7:30, so I said goodbye and made sure that they were all awake.

So finally at home, I could finally go to bed. I set my alarm at 7:30, to bring Pete to the train station and he could fresh up etc, with enough time. That’s about 1 ½ hour sleep, but still, it’s a sleep and we were tired. I probably woke up, but not completely. I turned off my alarm when it went on but I didn’t wake up. Normally this never happens, but this time, I did. But! Luckily, my dad had to go to the toilet, and he noticed that I wasn’t gone yet, so he woke me up and told me that it was 8:45. I was shocked so hard because Pete could not miss this flight. I actually thought that it was 9:45, or at least, that his airplane was leaving in less than an hour. I went upstairs, woke him up and told him that its VERY late, that we slept over. Pete jumped out his bed, like in UT2004, we ran downstairs and he knew that we still had 30 minutes to get there(his airplane departure was at 10:25), but I thought that he basically already missed it. I was very pissed off, and he was quite relaxed. I drove like the duck of hazard style, and then I realized, he still has some time. Still, I had to drive quite fast in order to get there on time, I think that I made a personal record. Less than 30 minutes to Schiphol from Almere (140km/h on the highway).

Gladly, we got there on time, and he got in to his airplane, without a shower, or any refreshing :).

After I dropped him off…
When I dropped him off at the airport, I was taking my time to drive back to Almere, and slept for a few hours, and went back to the World Trade Center again, since the Dutch World Cyber Games qualifiers were taking place. I watched some WarCarft 3 games, and unfortunately, I also saw Rotterdam losing to Zerter.

That was pretty much my last weekend.